6 Of The Best PHP Frameworks Worth Considering in 2016

Today, PHP has gained wide acceptance and is considered as one of the most preferred scripting languages worldwide. It has evolved over time and is used by developers for developing complicated sites and web applications. However, if your development project becomes overly complex, working with PHP can be a time-consuming and daunting proposition which increased the need for a structured way to carry out the development. This is where the PHP frameworks come in handy.

Through this post, I’ll provide a brief overview of PHP frameworks. In addition, I’ll share with you a list of 6 best PHP frameworks worth considering in 2016.

Why Do You Need to Use a PHP Framework?

At present, many developers are making use of the PHP frameworks for their web development projects. In fact, familiarizing how to use a PHP framework has become one of the most important skill sets for developers. Let’s have a look at the top reasons that encourage web developers to utilize a framework for their PHP development project(s):

Although, PHP is a template engine, but at times, it often creates messy and unmaintainable code. Since PHP frameworks are based on the MVC pattern, they help in creating applications with much cleaner and maintainable code.

Each PHP framework has a learning curve, but once you have mastered using a framework it will help you build web applications rapidly. In short, a PHP framework ensures rapid application development.

This is an ideal for intermediate developers wanting to build sites and web applications. Most importantly, it’s an enterprise-ready framework that can be adjusted to any information technology. That’s because, it is the most stable and flexible frameworks over the web that helps develop web applications that quickly adapts to your specific needs and wants. Symfony can be installed and configured on all the major platforms.

Key Features:

It comes loaded with phpDocumentor comments that help make the process of writing code super easy.

It helps in creating web apps in compliance with web best practices and most commonly followed design patterns. This means that the Symfony framework helps in building apps suited for new generation users.

It is based on the set of reusable PHP libraries that helps perform many different tasks such as routing, templating, and form creation to name a few.

It’s simple to use but can also adapt to meet your project’s complex requirements.

Symfony PHP framework is an ideal choice for working on large projects. But, what if you want to use such a framework for small projects? This is where the Silex framework comes in handy. Basically, Silex is a lightweight and fast framework compared to the Symfony framework – that can be used for developing better performance apps. Also referred to as a PHP micro-framework, Silex is “based on the Symfony2 components and inspired by Sinatra.”

Key Features:

Silex provides an intuitive and succinct API that is fun to work with.

It contains an extension system built around Pimple – a Dependency Injection Container – that helps Silex integrate with third-party libraries.

For people who want to build MVC-based applications quickly at lowest overhead, Phalcon will indeed prove the most viable choice as a PHP framework. It is one of the most fastest PHP frameworks since it is written in C and C++ languages. This framework is unique in comparison to other PHP frameworks, as it not just require downloading an archive and extracting it to a directory; instead, Phalcon needs to be downloaded and installed as a PHP module. The only downside to using Phalcon is that is might not run on shared hosting plans.

Key Features:

Help in decreasing the use of resources, and hence, increases execution speed.

It is optimized for developing performant apps.

It comes loaded with several great features, including asset management, caching, universal auto-loader and many more.

It’s been nearly six years since Laravel was released, and within a short span of time, it has become one of the most popular PHP frameworks among developers. The beauty of Laravel framework is that it helps in writing beautiful code – that is simple and readable. The best part! It provides tools to handle modern PHP. It provide convenience in building applications but may not be a good option for high-performance projects.

Key Features:

Help make rapid application development possible.

It comes built-in with a lightweight templating engine.

Offers access to plenty of screencast tutorials called “Laracasts”.

Provide great products to take the pain out associated with development projects. For instance, it’s Forge product help manage cloud servers a painless process.

It is considered as an OOP framework that makes use of some of the most advanced features of PHP like late static binding, anonymous functions, etc. Yii is based on written in PHP5 which helps in promoting clean, DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) design and help in rapid development.

Key Features:

It saves developers from writing complex and repetitive SQL statements, since they can model database data in the form of objects.

Yii is highly extensible and can be tailored to fit your particular needs.

It encourages testing as it comes integrated with a testing framework called Codeception.

Well, if you’ve been searching for a PHP framework that can help avoid PHP version conflict, then the CodeIgniter framework is exactly what you need. Moreover, it acts as a powerful tool for developers to help them build full-featured web apps. It’s easy to install and configures without creating any fuss. One great aspect of this PHP framework is that it encourage working on MVC but does not force you to implement the MVC development pattern.

Key features:

CodeIgniter works on shared hosting as well as dedicated hosting platforms.

Allows adding 3rd party plugins to embed complicated functionalities.

Enables you to use your own code and naming conventions.

The value passed to the database object via CodeIgniter is filtered for SQL injection attacks and so on.

Conclusion

Do you want to finish quickly up with your PHP based development project in the most efficient manner possible? In that case, you should consider using a PHP framework to fulfill your needs. In this post, you will get to know about 6 of the best PHP